A call for unrealized projects
Unlike unrealized architectural projects, which are frequently exhibited and circulated, unrealized artworks tend to remain unnoticed or little known. But perhaps there is another form of artistic agency in the partial expression, the incomplete idea, the projection of a mere intention? Agency of Unrealized Projects (AUP) seeks to document and display these works, in this way charting the terrain of a contingent future.
Though the state of being unrealized implies the potential for realization, not all projects are intended to be carried out. In other instances, artists deliberately leave works incomplete, to record interesting “failures” or experiments. Other planned projects involve consciously utopian, non-utilitarian, and conceptual spaces that were not made available for realization. Whether censored, forgotten, postponed, impossible, or rejected, unrealized projects form a unique testament to the speculative power of non-action.
AUP follows “Unbuilt Roads: 107 Unrealized Projects” collated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Guy Tortosa following several years of international research conducted in the late 1990s (and published in form of a book in 1997, Gerd Hatje, Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany), with contributions by 107 artists, from Vito Acconci to Rosemarie Trockel. Under the name of AUP these artist projects were first presented as a digital public archive by e-flux in 2009 followed by an open call for unrealized projects published by e-flux in 2011 and an AUP exhibition in Basel in 2011.
This new open call for unrealized projects is launched on the occasion of a Berlin edition of AUP in collaboration with the Berliner Künstlerprogramm/ DAAD. The AUP will take up temporary residence at the daadgalerie in Berlin from September 9th to October 20th 2012 to present newly submitted projects as well as the existing inventory of the AUP archive. The daadgalerie installation of AUP will be accompanied by a public program of lectures and presentations with numerous guests considering artistic and philosophical perspectives of the “unrealized” or the “unrealizable.”
You are invited to contribute your own unrealized projects to AUP’s growing archive. Contributions can include text (DOC) and image files (two JPEGs or PDFs up to 2MB each), and can be submitted online at www.e-flux.com/aup.
Please include one paragraph describing your project.
Submission for possible inclusion in AUP at the daadgalerie in Berlin will be accepted through October 20th 2012.
“Agency of Unrealized Projects” is a project by e-flux and the Serpentine Gallery London devised by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Julia Peyton-Jones, Julieta Aranda, and Anton Vidokle. The Berlin edition of AUP is conceived in collaboration with Berliner Künstlerprogramm/ DAAD.
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